Monday, April 13, 2020
‘Covid-19 isn’t going to go away’: Having face masks on will become NEW REALITY to live with, WHO envoy warns
Wearing face masks will become a “revolutionary” new norm of life the world needs to get accustomed to, just like it did when learning of cholera in the 19th century and of HIV in the 20th, a WHO coronavirus expert predicted.
“Some form of facial protection, I'm sure, is going to become the norm,” not least to give people a sense of reassurance, World Health Organization (WHO) special envoy David Nabarro told the BBC. This “new reality” will persist because Covid-19, which has so far claimed close to 116,000 of lives globally, “isn’t going to go away.”
Scientists don’t know if patients are able to generate immunity even after recovering from the coronavirus, Nabarro warned. The world is also miles away from the much-awaited vaccine, and its absence means that people have to cope using what they currently have.
Yes, we will have to wear masks. Yes, there will have to be more physical distancing.
Interrupting the virus transmission will likely become “a revolution” similar to the one that happened after “it was discovered that dirty water bore cholera in 1850,” or some 25 years ago when “we all learned about HIV/AIDS and its relationship with sex.”
Demand for masks and respirators skyrocketed after the Covid-19 outbreak, with medical facilities around the globe quickly running out of the crucial protective gear. Normally, healthcare staff have to put on — and then dispose of — a face mask, gloves and a protective robe every time when contacting a symptomatic or confirmed Covid-19 patient.
Wearing masks by regular citizens has become a matter of big debate in the media and scientific community. Some argue that commercially available masks lack adequate protection and therefore are useless against contagious respiratory illnesses such as the coronavirus. Others insist they do work, especially in overcrowded places.
WHO itself maintains that while a medical mask “can limit the spread of certain respiratory viral diseases, including Covid-19,” the use of it alone is insufficient. The organization also believes masks could cause self-contamination, breathing difficulties and even “false sense of security.”
https://www.rt.com/news/485685-wearing-masks-new-reality/
Global COVID-19 cases surpass 1.9 mln: Johns Hopkins University
Global COVID-19 cases have topped 1.9 million, with the United States reporting the highest number of cases and the highest death toll.
Confirmed COVID-19 cases worldwide topped 1.9 million on Monday, according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.
The fresh figure reached 1,904,566 with 118,459 deaths as of 4 p.m. local time (2000 GMT), the CSSE said.
According to the running tally, the United States reported 572,169 cases, the most in the world, as well as the highest death toll of 23,070. Spain registered 169,496 cases and 17,489 deaths, while Italy reported 159,516 cases and 20,465 deaths.
http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-04/14/c_138973131.htm
Opinion: Who Is Immune to the #Coronavirus?
By Marc Lipsitch
About this question, too, decisions with great consequences are being made, as they must be, based on only glimmers of data.Among the many uncertainties that remain about Covid-19 is how the human immune system responds to infection and what that means for the spread of the disease. Immunity after any infection can range from lifelong and complete to nearly nonexistent. So far, however, only the first glimmers of data are available about immunity to SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
What can scientists, and the decision makers who rely on science to inform policies, do in such a situation? The best approach is to construct a conceptual model — a set of assumptions about how immunity might work — based on current knowledge of the immune system and information about related viruses, and then identify how each aspect of that model might be wrong, how one would know and what the implications would be. Next, scientists should set out to work to improve this understanding with observation and experiment.
The ideal scenario — once infected, a person is completely immune for life — is correct for a number of infections. The Danish physician Peter Panum famously figured this out for measles when he visited the Faroe Islands (between Scotland and Iceland) during an outbreak in 1846 and found that residents over 65 who had been alive during a previous outbreak in 1781 were protected. This striking observation helped launch the fields of immunology and epidemiology — and ever since, as in many other disciplines, the scientific community has learned that often things are more complicated.
One example of “more complicated” is immunity to coronaviruses, a large group of viruses that sometimes jump from animal hosts to humans: SARS-CoV-2 is the third major coronavirus epidemic to affect humans in recent times, after the SARS outbreak of 2002-3 and the MERS outbreak that started in 2012.
Much of our understanding of coronavirus immunity comes not from SARS or MERS, which have infected comparatively small numbers of people, but from the coronaviruses that spread every year causing respiratory infections ranging from a common cold to pneumonia. In two separate studies, researchers infected human volunteers with a seasonal coronavirus and about a year later inoculated them with the same or a similar virus to observe whether they had acquired immunity.
In the first study, researchers selected 18 volunteers who developed colds after they were inoculated — or “challenged,” as the term goes — with one strain of coronavirus in 1977 or 1978. Six of the subjects were re-challenged a year later with the same strain, and none was infected, presumably thanks to protection acquired with their immune response to the first infection. The other 12 volunteers were exposed to a slightly different strain of coronavirus a year later, and their protection to that was only partial.
In another study published in 1990, 15 volunteers were inoculated with a coronavirus; 10 were infected. Fourteen returned for another inoculation with the same strain a year later: They displayed less severe symptoms and their bodies produced less of the virus than after the initial challenge, especially those who had shown a strong immune response the first time around.
No such human-challenge experiments have been conducted to study immunity to SARS and MERS. But measurements of antibodies in the blood of people who have survived those infections suggest that these defenses persist for some time: two years for SARS, according to one study, and almost three years for MERS, according to another one. However, the neutralizing ability of these antibodies — a measure of how well they inhibit virus replication — was already declining during the study periods.
These studies form the basis for an educated guess at what might happen with Covid-19 patients. After being infected with SARS-CoV-2, most individuals will have an immune response, some better than others. That response, it may be assumed, will offer some protection over the medium term — at least a year — and then its effectiveness might decline.
Other evidence supports this model. A recent peer-reviewed study led by a team from Erasmus University, in the Netherlands, published data from 12 patients showing that they had developed antibodies after infection with SARS-CoV-2. Several of my colleagues and students and I have statistically analyzed thousands of seasonal coronavirus cases in the United States and used a mathematical model to infer that immunity over a year or so is likely for the two seasonal coronaviruses most closely related to SARS-CoV-2 — an indication perhaps of how immunity to SARS-CoV-2 itself might also behave.If it is true that infection creates immunity in most or all individuals and that the protection lasts a year or more, then the infection of increasing numbers of people in any given population will lead to the buildup of so-called herd immunity. As more and more people become immune to the virus, an infected individual has less and less chance of coming into contact with a person susceptible to infection. Eventually, herd immunity becomes pervasive enough that an infected person on average infects less than one other person; at that point, the number of cases starts to go down. If herd immunity is widespread enough, then even in the absence of measures designed to slow transmission, the virus will be contained — at least until immunity wanes or enough new people susceptible to infection are born. At the moment, cases of Covid-19 have been undercounted because of limited testing — perhaps by a factor of 10 in some places, like Italy as of late last month. If the undercounting is around this level in other countries as well, then a majority of the population in much (if not all) of the world still is susceptible to infection, and herd immunity is a minor phenomenon right now. The long-term control of the virus depends on getting a majority of people to become immune, through infection and recovery or through vaccination — how large a majority depends on yet other parameters of the infection that remain unknown.
One concern has to do with the possibility of reinfection. South Korea’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently reported that 91 patients who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 and then tested negative for the virus later tested positive again. If some of these cases were indeed reinfections, they would cast doubt on the strength of the immunity the patients had developed.
An alternative possibility, which many scientists think is more likely, is that these patients had a false negative test in the middle of an ongoing infection, or that the infection had temporarily subsided and then re-emerged. South Korea’s C.D.C. is now working to assess the merit of all these explanations. As with other diseases for which it can be difficult to distinguish a new infection from a new flare-up of an old infection — like tuberculosis — the issue might be resolved by comparing the viral genome sequence from the first and the second periods of infection.
For now, it is reasonable to assume that only a minority of the world’s population is immune to SARS-CoV-2, even in hard-hit areas. How could this tentative picture evolve as better data come in? Early hints suggest that it could change in either direction.
It is possible that many more cases of Covid-19 have occurred than have been reported, even after accounting for limited testing. One recent study (not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that rather than, say, 10 times the number of detected cases, the United States may really have more like 100, or even 1,000, times the official number. This estimate is an indirect inference from statistical correlations. In emergencies, such indirect assessments can be early evidence of an important finding — or statistical flukes. But if this one is correct, then herd immunity to SARS-CoV-2 could be building faster than the commonly reported figures suggest. Then again, another recent study (also not yet peer-reviewed) suggests that not every case of infection may be contributing to herd immunity. Of 175 Chinese patients with mild symptoms of Covid-19, 70 percent developed strong antibody responses, but about 25 percent developed a low response and about 5 percent developed no detectable response at all. Mild illness, in other words, might not always build up protection. Similarly, it will be important to study the immune responses of people with asymptomatic cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection to determine whether symptoms, and their severity, predict whether a person becomes immune.
The balance between these uncertainties will become clearer when more serologic surveys, or blood tests for antibodies, are conducted on large numbers of people. Such studies are beginning and should show results soon. Of course, much will depend on how sensitive and specific the various tests are: how well they spot SARS-CoV-2 antibodies when those are present and if they can avoid spurious signals from antibodies to related viruses. Even more challenging will be understanding what an immune response means for an individual’s risk of getting reinfected and their contagiousness to others. Based on the volunteer experiments with seasonal coronaviruses and the antibody-persistence studies for SARS and MERS, one might expect a strong immune response to SARS-CoV-2 to protect completely against reinfection and a weaker one to protect against severe infection and so still slow the virus’s spread.
But designing valid epidemiologic studies to figure all of this out is not easy — many scientists, including several teams of which I’m a part — are working on the issue right now. One difficulty is that people with a prior infection might differ from people who haven’t yet been infected in many other ways that could alter their future risk of infection. Parsing the role of prior exposure from other risk factors is an example of the classic problem epidemiologists call “confounding” — and it is made maddeningly harder today by the fast-changing conditions of the still-spreading SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.And yet getting a handle on this fast is extremely important: not only to estimate the extent of herd immunity, but also to figure out whether some people can re-enter society safely, without becoming infected again or serving as a vector, and spreading the virus to others. Central to this effort will be figuring out how long protection lasts.
With time, other aspects of immunity will become clearer as well. Experimental and statistical evidence suggests that infection with one coronavirus can offer some degree of immunity against distinct but related coronaviruses. Whether some people are at greater or lesser risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 because of a prior history of exposure to coronaviruses is an open question. And then there is the question of immune enhancement: Through a variety of mechanisms, immunity to a coronavirus can in some instances exacerbate an infection rather than prevent or mitigate it. This troublesome phenomenon is best known in another group of viruses, the flaviviruses, and may explain why administering a vaccine against dengue fever, a flavivirus infection, can sometimes make the disease worse.
Such mechanisms are still being studied for coronaviruses, but concern that they might be at play is one of the obstacles that have slowed the development of experimental vaccines against SARS and MERS. Guarding against enhancement will also be one of the biggest challenges facing scientists trying to develop vaccines for Covid-19. The good news is that research on SARS and MERS has begun to clarify how enhancement works, suggesting ways around it, and an extraordinary range of efforts is underway to find a vaccine for Covid-19, using multiple approaches.
More science on almost every aspect of this new virus is needed, but in this pandemic, as with previous ones, decisions with great consequences must be made before definitive data are in. Given this urgency, the traditional scientific method — formulating informed hypotheses and testing them by experiments and careful epidemiology — is hyper-accelerated. Given the public’s attention, that work is unusually on display. In these difficult circumstances, I can only hope that this article will seem out of date very shortly — as much more is soon discovered about the coronavirus than is known right now. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/13/opinion/coronavirus-immunity.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
Bangladesh executes Mujib’s killer Abdul Majed and what it says about the region’s history
In episode 442 of #CutTheClutter, Shekhar Gupta discusses who was Capt Abdul Majed and political turmoil that began in August 1975.
Captain Abdul Majed was Saturday midnight hanged in Bangladesh’s capital city Dhaka for the assassination of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the country’s founding president and father to current prime minister Sheikh Hasina.
Captain Majed was arrested in Dhaka last week. It appears he told Bangladeshi authorities that he had been hiding in Kolkata for a long time. He was quickly executed since he was carrying a death sentence since 1998, which was upheld in 2009.
Army coup
After a group broke away from his party and started insurgent activities, Rahman had panicked. So on 14 June 1975, he imposed an emergency in the country.
Army officers at the time decided the emergency could not continue and approached Ziaur Rahman, the second highest ranking Army officer. The group planned to carry out a coup and assassinate Mujib if he didn’t surrender.
On 15 August 1975, a group from the first armoured division spilt into four groups. One of the groups went to Mujib’s house to assassinate him while the others ensured his defence forces could not respond.
Mujib’s son was first killed, followed by the chief of military intelligence who tried to stop the killing. Then Mujib’s younger brother and wife were killed as well as his two younger sons and daughters-in-law. When Mujib refused to surrender, he was killed and several other family members were assassinated.
What followed
Sheikh Mujib’s party members were arrested and later killed in jails. Khondaker Mostaq Ahmad, then commerce minister of Bangladesh, who had supported the coup, was made in-charge of the administration.
Upset by what was happening, war hero Brigadier Khaled Mosharraf carried out a coup of his own. He, however, didn’t intend to rule the country, but wanted to restore some order. This lasted just four days as Rahman, who was appointed chief of Army Staff by then, managed to take power from Mosharraf.
While the coup was planned to ensure Sheikh Mujibur Rahman lost power, which is why his family was also killed, two of his daughters escaped since they were in West Germany then. This included Sheikh Hasina, who later took refuge in Delhi.
In 1996, Sheikh Hasina came to power and many of those involved in the coup and subsequent assassinations have been executed since. Some are under investigation while others are being traced.
'God is with us': Many Muslims in Pakistan flout the coronavirus ban in mosques
Asif Shahzad
Sabir Durrani says he offers prayers almost every day at a mosque in the central Pakistani city of Multan. He says that often a dozen or more men are in attendance - none of them wearing protective face masks.
Durrani, 52, is among thousands of devout Muslims flouting Pakistan government orders issued late last month banning religious congregations of five or more people to stem the spread of the coronavirus. The disease has so far infected more than 5,300 people and killed 93 in the world's second-most populous Muslim country.
"Our prayer leader told us that the virus can't infect us the way it does Western people," Durrani told Reuters. "He said we wash our hands and we wash our face five times a day before we say our prayers, and the infidels don't, so we need not worry. God is with us."
The Islamic lobby holds immense clout in Pakistan, a country of over 200 million people. Religious parties have not been successful in electoral politics but they are able to whip up large, often violent, crowds on matters pertaining to religion, such as in support of the country's harsh blasphemy law.
"Religion and prayers are an emotional issue for many people in Pakistan, and the government has to be sensitive to that,” Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a special assistant to Prime Minister Imran Khan, told Reuters.
More than 60% of the coronavirus cases in Pakistan have so far been linked to Muslims returning from pilgrimages in the Middle East and followers of the Tablighi Jamaat, an orthodox proselytizing group.
But the worry is of a big spike coming from the congregational prayers held in mosques, especially on Fridays, the Islamic sabbath. The numbers in attendance at prayers are likely to increase with the onset of the holy month of Ramadan within two weeks, and authorities are struggling to cope.
While the Council of Islamic Ideology, a body that advises the government on religious issues, has called on clerics and the public to cooperate with government measures, several priests and local leaders have opposed the ban.
A prominent leader of a religious party told a crowd of hundreds of people gathered for a funeral last week that government orders to limit congregations were unacceptable.
"If you do this, we will be forced to think that mosques are being deserted on America's instructions," Mufti Kafayatullah told the crowd. "We're ready to give our lives, but not ready to desert our mosques."
Blind eye
In Karachi, Pakistan's largest city, police were attacked for a second straight week as they attempted to halt prayers at a mosque last Friday. A policewoman was injured in the clashes, and in the previous week, police fired shots in the air to quell an angry mob.
In other cities, police seem to be turning a blind eye to some mosque gatherings.
Last Friday, one of the top Twitter trends in Pakistan was "Muslims, the mosque is calling you".
In the capital, Islamabad, hundreds gathered on Friday without any hindrance at one of the city's largest mosques, located just two miles (three km) from the seat of Pakistan's government, including parliament and the prime minister's secretariat.
On March 27, authorities filed 88 cases against mosque administrations in Karachi and arrested 38 people for defying restrictions on Friday congregations, but charges were dropped a day later, and the people were released.
"I think it's partly appeasement and partly the fact that Pakistan's governments and politics are locked permanently in an electoral framework in which they don't want to lose support of the religious elite and religious proletariat," Pakistani author and defense analyst Ayesha Siddiqa told Reuters.
Akbar, the special assistant to the prime minister, said most mosques were cooperating with the government.
He added however: "This is a sensitive matter, we don't want to impose it using a stick. And even if we wanted to, there aren't enough sticks to implement it across Pakistan."
پاکستان میں امریکا اور یورپ سے بھی بری صورت حال ہوسکتی ہے، چیئرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری
پاکستان کی پہلی خاتون وزیراعظم محترمہ بینظیر بھٹو کے صاحبزادے بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے اے ایف پی سے بات کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ اب تک وفاقی حکومت کورونا وائرس کے خلاف سست روی سے فیصلے کر رہی ہے اور لاک ڈاﺅن کے لئے بھی کوئی ٹھوس فیصلہ کرنے میں ناکام نظر آتی ہے اور اس کے ساتھ ساتھ صحت کے شعبے میں رقم مہیا کرنے کے لئے بھی تیار نہیں۔ اب تک پاکستان نے اس وباءسے 94لوگ فوت ہو چکے ہیں جبکہ 5230 کی کورونا وائرس کی تصدیق ہو چکی ہے۔ اے ایف پی کے مطابق پاکستان کے 21کروڑ سے زیادہ عوام کی اکثریت گنجان آباد علاقوں میں رہتی ہے اور صحت کے ماہرین کے مطابق ابھی پاکستان میں کورونا وائرس کی ابتدا ہے۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے اپنے کراچی کے آفس سے ایک ویڈیو کال کے ذریعے اے ایف پی سے بات کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ اس وباءکے پھیلنے کی ابتدا ہی سے ایک غلط احساس تحفظ کا اظہار کیا جا رہا ہے۔ ہم اس حقیقت کو نظرانداز کر رہے ہیں کہ دنیا بھر میں یہ وباءکس قدر تیزی سے پھیل رہی ہے اور اس کا احساس نہ ہونے کی وجہ سے ہمیں بروقت ضروری اقدامات اٹھانے میں مشکلات پیش آرہی ہیں۔ اے ایف پی نے لکھا ہے کہ عمران خان کو ملک بھر میں لاک ڈاﺅن نہ کرنے پر تنقید کا سامنا ہے۔ پاکستان میں صوبوں نے اپنے طور پر لاک ڈاﺅن کئے ہیں، اسکول اور دفاتر بند کر دئیے ہیں۔
پاکستان کا کورونا کا پہلا کیس سندھ میں دائر ہوا تھا جس کے بعد پاکستان پیپلزپارٹی نے گذشتہ ماہ ہی لاک ڈاﺅ کا فیصلہ کیا تھا۔ بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ پاکستان کے صحت کے ماہرین نے یہ تجویز دی تھی کہ پورے ملک میں سخت اقدامات لئے جائیں۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ہم معیشت کو دوبارہ زندہ کر سکتے ہیں لیکن لوگوں کو دوبارہ زندہ نہیں کر سکتے۔ اگر ہم صرف یہ امید کرنے لگیں کہ سب اچھا ہو جائے گا اور اپنی تیاری نہ کریں تو پاکستان بہت خاموشی سے ایک تباہی کی صورتحال کی طرف جاسکتا ہے جس کے شدید خطرناک مضمرات ہو سکتے ہیں۔
بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا کہ پاکستان میں صورتحال امریکہ اور مغربی یورپ سے بھی بری ہو سکتی ہے کیونکہ پاکستان میں حفاظتی لباس اور طبی عملے کی کمی کے ساتھ ساتھ دیگر طبی آلات کی بھی کمی ہے۔ اے ایف پی نے لکھا کہ پی پی پی بلاول بھٹو زرداری کے نانا ذوالفقار علی بھٹو نے قائم کی تھی اور ان کی والدہ دو مرتبہ پاکستان کی وزیراعظم رہی اور جب تیسری مرتبہ وہ انتخابات کے لئے جا رہی تھی تو 27دسمبر 2007 کو انہیں شہید کر دیا گیا۔ اے ایف پی نے یہ بھی لکھا کہ بلاول بھٹو زرداری پر یہ تنقید ہوتی رہی کہ وہ موروثی سیاست سے فائدہ اٹھانے والے سیاستدان ہیں اور ان کی اردو زبان پر بھی تنقید کی گئی لیکن وہ اس وقت حزب مخالف کی قابل ذکر آواز بن چکے ہیں اور وہ بہت اطمینان سے اپنی پالیسیاں بیان کرتے ہیں اور ایک قابل سیاستدان کے طور پر ابھرے ہیں۔
#coronavirus #Pakistan 'sleep walking' into virus disaster, says opposition leader
Pakistan risks "sleep walking" into a coronavirus catastrophe where death tolls reach levels seen in the West and perilously under-resourced hospitals are pushed to the brink, an opposition leader told AFP on Monday.
Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the son of Pakistan's first female leader Benazir Bhutto, said the country's response to the pandemic so far had been characterised by federal foot-dragging over a comprehensive lockdown and an unwillingness to divert cash to the buckling health care system.
Pakistan so far has recorded 93 deaths from a total of 5,230 cases, but experts worry the impoverished country of 215 million people -- many of whom live in cramped, multi-generational households -- is only at the start of the coronavirus curve.
"There is definitely a false sense of security that we've seen from the start of this crisis," Bhutto said in a video call from his Karachi office.
"We have seen a desire to ignore science and facts and the examples of what has been happening around us internationally, which has hampered us taking the timely and necessary action."
Prime Minister Imran Khan has faced particular criticism after saying Pakistan could not afford a country-wide lockdown, citing the economic damage that would be unleashed.
Pakistan now has a de facto lockdown after provinces acted independently to shutter schools and companies, but officials are under pressure to loosen restrictions as the economy suffers.
Pakistan's first COVID-19 cases were reported in the southern province of Sindh, governed by Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), with officials there ordering a lockdown last month.
Bhutto said provincial health advisors, academics and experts had recommended tougher measures across Pakistan.
"We can bring the economy back to life, but we cannot bring people back to life," he said.
"If we just hope for the best and don't prepare for the worst... then Pakistan is sleep walking into a disastrous situation and I genuinely fear for the consequences."
Bhutto said the situation in Pakistan could be worse than the US or western Europe given the country's shortage of protective gear for medical staff, a lack of critical care beds and other problems with the underfunded health care system.
The PPP was founded by Bhutto's grandfather Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. His mother Benazir became prime minister twice and was running a third time when she was killed in a gun and bomb attack on December 27, 2007.
For years Bhutto, 31, faced harsh criticism for his spotty grasp of the Urdu language and was lambasted for benefiting from dynastic politics.
But he has become one of the opposition's most recognizable faces -- known for his cool demeanor and lack of vitriol in what is traditionally a bare-knuckle political scene.
اگر صرف بہتری کی امید رکھی تو ملک تباہ کن صورتحال کی جانب بڑھ رہا ہے: بلاول بھٹو
پاکستان کی سیاسی جماعت پاکستان پیپلز پارٹی کے چیرمین بلاول بھٹو زرداری نے کہا ہے کہ اگر پاکستان میں کورونا وائرس سے نمٹنے کے سلسلے میں صرف بہترین کی امید رکھی جاتی رہی اور بدترین صورتحال کے لیے تیاری نہ کی گئی تو ملک ایک تباہ کن صورتحال کی جانب بڑھ رہا ہے۔
فرانسیسی خبر رساں ادارے اے ایف پی کو دیے گئے ایک انٹرویو میں پیپلزپارٹی کے چیئرمین کا کہنا تھا کہ ’ملک میں اس بحران کے آغاز سے ہی ہم نے تحفظ کا ایک جھوٹا احساس دیکھا ہے۔ ہم نے سائنس، حقائق اور دنیا کی مثالوں کو نظرانداز کرنے کی خواہش دیکھی ہے اور اس نے ہمیں بروقت اور ضروری اقدامات کرنے سے روکے رکھا ہے۔‘
ان کا کہنا تھا کہ ’اگر ہم صرف بہتری کی امید رکھیں گے اور بدترین حالات کے لیے تیار نہ ہوں گے تو پاکستان آنکھیں بند کر کے ایک تباہ کن صورتحال کی جانب بڑھ رہا ہے۔‘
انھوں نے یہ بھی کہا کہ ملک کی معیشت میں تو دوبارہ جان ڈالی جا سکتی ہے مگر مردہ افراد کو زندہ کرنا ممکن نہیں۔